Brake block



Feb. 7, 1961 R. w. BIGGS BRAKE BLOCK Original Filed July 27, 1956 I VF] I ATTORNEY 1 min, ,f 0

2,970,675 BRAKE BLOCK 7 Robert w. Biggs, Shaker Heights, Ohio, assignor to The g 2 Claims. (Cl. 188-251) This application isa division of my copending application Serial No. 600,531, filed July 27, 1956, now Patent No. 2,892,707, issued June 30, 1959, and this invention relates to friction assemblies for vehicular use and such as brake blocks of the type comprising a curved metallic backing plate and integrally bonded thereto sintered friction material made of powdered metals predominantly. The invention is believed to have particular significance in connection with curved brake shoes or, blocks of rela tively great thickness as currently used for heavy motor vehicles such as trucks, tractors, truck trailers, and earthmoving machinery. v

Friction articles of powdered predominantly metallic material, sintered and bonded to a metallic backing member, are well known to the art and have numerous advantages over fibrous facings, the sintered facings being less susceptible to changes in temperature and atmospheric conditions, less affected by oil, grease and foreign matter, and showing lesswear with the same use.

Friction articles of the type referred to are produced by pressing or briquetting powders of suitable composition usually comprising metals predominantly and containing minor amounts of non-metallic ingredients such as graphite. The briquette or compact so formed is later heated to a sintering temperature, but because the metal powder even when sintered is rather porous and of low tensile strength, it is customary to provide a reinforcing backing plate of steel or of copper. Conventionally the heat of the sintering step is used both to cause the pressed powder to sinter and to integrally bond it to the backing plate.

Considerable heat is required for the sintering and considerable heat and also pressure is required for the bonding. Efforts to accomplish sintering and bonding simultaneously,-by placing assembled compacts and backing members in a press and there subjecting them to both heat and pressure, have met with many inconveniences, difiiculties, discouragementand even failures, particularly when curved parts are involved. For one thing die parts in a heated press or furnace take a long time to heat, as

- do separator" members usually used to achieve some production economics. For another thing, the heat to which the die parts, pressure blocks, separators, etc., are subjected causes them to lose proper curvature so that inaccurate products result. Of course the compact could be separately heated for sintering, and then allowed to cool, and then heated again along with the backing for binding in a press, but the second heating step sinters the materials further (often too far) and the use of dual heats are slow and expensive. Also, when curved surfaces are involved,,as for brake shoes, often the material is too thick to bend afterbonding (e.g., when thick as required for large trucks) and of too great a curvature and too long an arc to properly press for bonding within a furnace where a pressure exerted at right anglesvto one part of an arc is not at all at right angles to another part of the same are. This means that heretofore some articles could not be made at all, not even piecemeal.

It is an object of the present invention to provide a simple and inexpensive brake block for overcoming the above mentioned diflicultiee.

- United. States Patent 2,970,675 Patented Feb. 7,1961

Other objects and advantages will become apparent and the invention may be better understood from consideration'of the following description taken, in connection with the accompanying drawing in which;

Fig. l is a diagrammatic view of cold press-furnace-hot press apparatus useful for producing articles according to the invention; e

Fig. 2 is a cold press part section showing a pressed compact being removed from the front of cold press 20 of Fig. l; 7

Fig. 3 is a furnace part section through one of two troughs of furnace 30 of Fig. l, and showing a pressed compact and a steel backing being placed thereon; and

Fig. 4 is a hot press part section showing a bonded assembly of compact and backing being removed from between the dies of hot press 40 of Fig. 1.

Referring now to Figure l, and looking generally from right to left, there is shown cold pressmechanism 20 provided with a hopper 21 for introducing a mixture of metallic and non-metallic powders, which, for example, may comprise a 500 pound mixture of .100 pounds of powdered graphite, 330 pounds of iron powder, and pounds of cast iron grit, all of which amounts to percentages, by weight, as follows:

At some remote place, not shown, materials such as the above may be dried before use and mixed as in a cone blender for a blending time, for example, of 30 minutes, and then introduced into the hopper 21 from which they eventually enter into a contoured mold cavity 22 where they are compressed by downward movement of a cooperating die 23 the movement of which may be controlled from push buttons 24 by a furnace loading operator FL.

The furnace loader man FL may periodically call for the pressing of curvedcompacts in the cold press 20, and the pressed cold compact is removed from the mold cavity so that FL can grasp it by hand or by means of tongs 27, and then place compacts one by one upon either of two troughs 31 with which the furnace 30 is provided. 1

An article according to the present invention may be made by first compacting the powders in the cold" press, then sintering in the muffle 30, and then hot press bonding in a hot" press 40 which is not heated at all (except by the work) and in fact is preferably cooled as by circulating water. The bi-metallic article final product uses a solid metal backingplate 41 whichcould be introduced either for the first time adjacent the compact in the hot press 40, or in the open as upon a table portion 371 of the control console 37, but I find'it preferable to preheat the backing by introducing it into the entry end of the muflle along with the individual compact. Thus, as illustrated in Figure 3, the FL operator may use tongs 27 to place the compact down on the trough 31, in front of a bar or other portion of pusher mechanism 33, and may use his fingers to place a backing 41 on top of the compact just as it enters the furnace. I have found that no controlled atmosphere is necessary in the fur-- With this high carbon mix (e.g., with graphite not less than by weight) this oif'gas, continues to protect compact and backing for the limited time necessary for operator UL to remove the work from the furnace with his tongs 38 and transfer it through the air and place it immediately in any one of the three independently operable stations of the hot press 40, where it is immediately pressed and held (as hereafter described) for the bond While the ofi-gassing continues.

It will be observed that in the cold press 20, the die cavity 22 and die 23 are contoured to form the work substantially as desired. The trough shaped top of each refractory bottom 31 in the furnace is likewise contoured. These contours need not be made with any great accuracy, but in the hot press 40, each top and \bottom pressing block, 42, 43, respectively, is provided with the exact curvature of the desired finished part, and I find it preferable to have these blocks or dies water-cooled to retain their exact curvature as one of the blocks, such as the bottom block 43, is moved by hydraulic or other pressure toward the other to finally bond the curved compact to the backing, as well as to finally shape both members exactly as desired.

The three stations of hot press 40 (in which there may really be nothing "hot" but the work) are individually controlled through respective push-button stations 44 each operable to provide, as through a respective electrical timer 45, an exact (though adjustable) cycle of pressing time which for the mix of the example may be 1 or 1% minutes of intermittent hold" pressure (made up of l to 1% minutes of repeated cycles of'4 seconds close, 1 second open, to take care ofwork shrinkage, 4 seconds close, etc.) after which automatic or manual means may be relied on to provide 1 minute full open" to provide suflicient die cooling time. Good results, using such a bonding time of 1% minutes, have been secured with a bonding pressure of 1500 p.s.i. Because the ofi-gas from the compact may diminish during this bonding time, or because it may be desired to press a mix other than the high carbon content mix given by way of example, it is sometimes desirable to provide a natural gas curtain around the hot press throughout the entire bonding cycle with proper ducting (not shown) to carry the dangerous gases away.

Those skilled in the art will realize that Figs. 1-4 of the drawing are merely illustrative of process and some apparatus and some additional components may be required. For example, there may be, though not shown, a hydraulic pump or other means for supplying pressure for operating each press, and automatic or manual means for operating furnace entry doors (not shown) and additional means for operating one or the other of the furnace acme-rs exit doors 39 whenever a compact in the particular trough I is ready to be removed.

In operation, exact pressures used depend in each case upon exact dimensions of the article finally desired, and also upon the materials used. Final structural strength, wear rates, and other physical properties have been found to depend upon many things including cold compacting pressure, sintering temperature, and hot press bonding pressure. With the 20 C, Fe, 10 Grit mix given above, it was found that 15 t.s.i. was a suitable cold molding pressure for certain circumstances. Other considerations led to the conclusion that 1500 p.s.i. was a suitable hot press bonding pressure for the particular conditions under consideration. These are details which might conceivably be worked out by anyone skilled in the art, but an important difference in the present invention lies in the fact that it permits full processing of large curved compacts by heating the materials involved when they are not under pressure, thus not only reducing the cost of required apparatus (because press parts are not involved in the furnace), and reducing difficulties of holding curvature, but in many cases for the first time making possible the production of the article by any method. Thus, with methods according to the invention I can articles it" 'ihick (or even thicker) and curved as much a through an arcuate included angle of 60' or 70' (Le, well over 30').

By pressing in water-cooled dies it is possible to accomplish the bonding and any necessary final consolidation in a very short time. Water cooling preserves the curvature of the dies and the friction material and backing are forced to. accept this curvature. Adequate bond and densification suitable to give minimum wear rate is ob tained after merely heating the stock in a furnace without any pressure or specific furnace atmosphere at all, and I have found that wherever suflicient graphite is used the material will not oxidize so as to make bonding impossible. With respect to the present invention, it is not strictly carbon content which controls because it depends upon the form on which the carbon is present. Thus, graphite has been found to give better gassing than petroleum coke. For gassing charcoal is even better than graphite but it is not strong enough nor good enough friction-wise to be used, whereas graphite provides adequate mechanical properties for thefinal article and at the same time provides sufficient protective atmosphere automatically by otf-gassing of the friction material.

I have found for specific olLthe-road vehicle arcuate brake linings which have heretofore been considered too curved'to press, and heretofore considered too thick to roll bend after flat pressing, that the articles can a'dequately be made according to the herein described process with the result of quadrupling life of $1600 worth of drums with which the vehicles are equip aed while giving long lining life, actually about five times the lining life of prior art asbestos lining material.

With processes according to' the present invention curvatures are no problem because the final curvatures (which are the only critical ones) are determined by water cooled dies which hold their curvatures because they need not be heated for sintering and bonding of friction material. No complicated bending of the materials is necessitated and all that is required is to press the powders, to heat them (both for sintering and bonding) and then to press bond them to the requisite backing material. Actually, it is believed that the water cooled hot press operation not only bonds the friction material to the backing but may be used to complete the sintering of the material since there is plenty of residual heat in the sintered compact to not only accomplish the bonding but to provide further sintering and cohesion of the friction material itself.

While I have illustrated and described a particular embodiment, various modifications may obviously be made without departing from the true spirit and scope of the invention which is intended not to be limited except by the scope of the following claims and their reasonable equivalents.

I claim':

l. A curved brake block at least thick radially and extending over an arc of at least 30' made from a sintered compact of predominantly metallic powders and characterized by substantially uniform density along the axial dimension of the block.

2. A curved brake block at least i6" thick radially and extending over an arc of at least 30' made from a solid metal backing member and a sintered compact of predominantly metallic powders and characterized by substantially uniform density along the axial dimension of the block. 1

References Cited in the file of this patent UNITED STATES PATENTS 2,389,061 Kuzmick Nov. 13, 1945 2,863,211 Wellman Dec. 9, 1958 2,873,517 Wellman Feb. 11, 1959 FOREIGN PATENTS 164,690 Australia Aug. 19, 1955 

